The Murky World of Deradicalisation - Binoy Kampmark

The Murky World of Deradicalisation

By Binoy
Kampmark

It has attracted money and the
implementation of programs, another standard diversionary
tactic common in many societies. It is all touted as a good
bit of social engineering, a form of anger management by
other means. The basis of that problematic term
“deradicalisation” entails the erroneous idea that
telling a person something should not be done politically is
necessarily going to be effective.

The subjective analogue
on deradicalisation with Hamlet is apparent: “for there is
nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it
so.” So, the teachers, pedagogues, social workers and
lecturers have sought to persuade those young incipient
jihadis that somehow, finding numerous virgins at the end of
the tunnel of martyrdom is a bad idea. Best be a model
citizen, seeking a dull job and treating politics,
essentially, as a politician’s business. A country’s
leaders can simply go on with their meddlesome ways,
creating mischief overseas while proclaiming the virtues of
stability at home.

The idea of deradicalisation starts off
on a misstep, a malformed idea. It assumes that a person is
going to turn rotten and rush off to the Middle East at any
given moment unless the instructor nips such ambitions in
the bud with appropriate ideals and suitable options. It
also assumes that ideas, however developed or reasoned, can
be cordoned, quarantined and varied.

Nor are the scholar
squirrels and analysts entirely clear about what the initial
stage – radicalisation – actually means. (The same goes
for the term terrorism, a multi-headed beast of multi-headed
meanings.) Criminologist Kris Christmann has advanced no
less than eight separate models on the process of
deradicalisation while placing his finger on ten theoretical
models.

A gaze through the literature is bewildering,
whether one soddens ones feet in Taarnby’s eight-stage
recruitment process, wades through Wiktorowicz’s
al-Muhajiroun model, or slugs through McCauley and
Moskalenko’s twelve mechanisms of political
radicalisation. Variety, in this world, is not the spice of
the life so much as a muddle in the middle.

Little wonder
then that Christmann’s report for the British Youth
Justice Board Preventing Religious Radicalisation and
Violent Extremism suggests, citing previous studies,
that general scholarship on this is “impressionistic,
superficial and often pretentious, venting far reaching
generalisations on the basis of episodic evidence”.

It
also assumes that a person is only permitted to think in a
certain, pleasing way: the orthodoxy of the state, the
wisdom of the technocrats and politicians who supposedly
operate on a Platonic plane of high reason.

This,
essentially, amounts to a form of cerebral amputation, a
reverse brainwashing supposedly designed to respond, as a
targeted sonic boom, to the brainwashing methods of the
madrassa. It is a political strategy designed to neuter the
potentially radical subject, while also instilling a dull,
mute conformity. It is, in short, reactive, pre-emptive, and
unimaginative.

While this should not be taken as a hearty
endorsement of the gun toting antics of an Islamic State
recruit, the state obsession with curtailing a youth’s
understanding of political or religious destiny (in Islam,
there is no functional difference on this point) is doomed
to fail. All states insist on their brand of
radicalisation, whatever the popular ideology of the day.

The attempt by such countries as the United States,
Britain, France, and Australia to claim clarity above the
radical politics of the Middle East also suggests a
remarkable confusion. Deradicalisation programs are
themselves facing an impossible end: attempting to convince
youths that they not take up arms against a state that
itself is engaged in war in Muslim countries, or that their
adventurist spirit must somehow be channelled.

The icing on
this system, in turn, is the Countering Violent Extremism
(CVE) program. Be it in legislation or in the CVE program
confusion reigns over what constitutes an actual terrorist
act, and what constitutes radicalisation itself.

In Syria,
an epicentre of the radicalism debate, radical groups do
battle against a form of secular violence; secular violence,
through the Assad regime in Syria, is reasserted as a
defender against radicalisation. It would be far more
fitting to say that war is of its own accord the great agent
of radicalisation, the fulcrum behind inspiring others to
join it like moths to a flickering flame.

The general
burden of proof for deradicalising youth tends to fail at
the conceptual level. What it has led to is a sprawling set
of programs with false assumptions. The obvious question,
though one that is persistently ignored, is how a teenager
with a spotless police record might still wish to seek glory
in a distant land behind a gun.

This is an opportunity for you as one of the 4 million potential funders and recipients of a Universal Basic Income to collectively consider the issue:1. Is UBI is a desirable policy for New Zealand; and2. How should a UBI system work in practice. More>>

The National party has announced its youth justice policy, which includes a controversial plan for recidivist serious youth offenders to be hit over the head with a comically large rubber mallet. More>>

ALSO:

It's been brought to my attention that Labour's new campaign slogan is "Let's do this". A collective call to action. A mission. I myself was halfway out of the couch before I realised I wasn't sure what it was I was supposed to do. More>>

ALSO:

Ordinary citizens have had very few venues where they can debate and discuss as to what they believe has led to the crisis in affordable housing and how we might begin to address this. The HiveMind on affordable housing was about redressing the balance. More>>

ALSO:

This is an opportunity for you as one of the 4 million guardians of our common water resources to help us find mutually agreeable solutions to the critical task of collectively managing these resources for health and sustainability. More>>